How Account Managers Deliver Strategy

David unpacks six principles that can help creative firms benefit from delivering strategic guidance through their account managers.

Links

"Account Managers and Strategy" by David C. Baker at punctuation.com

Transcript

Blair Enns: David, we are talking about account managers once again today. I think we've done a few topics on that role. This one is delivering strategic guidance through account managers. Before we get into the content here, you do what has turned into a fairly sizable seminar every year on account management, don't you?

David C. Baker: Yes. In March in Atlanta every year, I partner with Jenny Plant from London. She's really good on the account management side. Then I usually bring another guest in as well. I love it. Plus listeners everywhere saying, "Yes, another episode about us forgotten account managers and project managers too" It's like the people who get the glory in these firms are the skill players, the subject matter experts. I'm always beating the drum about account managers and project managers, so much so that I just like to do events for them too. For one thing, they're fun people. Who wants to do an event for researchers? By God, they're boring.

Blair: All right.

David: Sorry.

Blair: David Baker, the account manager's hero. I think your post dropped today. We're recording in the middle of August.

David: Yes. It's blowing up too like, "Oh God, what did I forget?" Somebody out of the woodwork. Here are the three points where David's wrong. I'm going to have to go slay some LinkedIn keyboard warriors when we're done. [chuckles]

Blair: All right. You lead off by saying account managers are the most confusing role players in our field. Do you mean the field of creative and marketing, digital?

David: Yes.

Blair: What do you mean by that? Why are they confusing?

David: They're not confusing to the ad agency people who are too dependent on account managers, but they're very confusing to probably the biggest group in our field that doesn't utilize them. That would be digital firms, dev shops, and so on.

Blair: These are the firms that are more likely to use PMs or project managers than account managers.

David: Yes, or have the people who are actually doing the work interface directly with the client. There's this sense of like, "I don't know what they do. I'm open to it, but what do account managers do? Aren't they just going to make this more expensive?" As a firm develops a deeper perspective on all of this, you realize that alongside the growth of account management would also be strategy, account planning, research, which are very necessary. The account manager then who has had the spotlight on them, and account managers love the spotlight on them too, they're thinking, "Okay, what is my role against a strategist role?

If there's this strategy function, how do I interplay with that? Because before that person was introduced, I thought I was the strategist on behalf of the client." That's where there's some confusion that comes into this role. You and I have talked a lot about it. I've written a lot about it. We've had past episodes about it. This is really just dealing with that one little teeny kernel of what's the role of account managers in strategic work. What's the interplay between strategy and account manager?

Blair: In my first agency job, I was an account manager. There was no such thing as a strategist or a planner. Fast forward a couple of agencies and get to much larger agencies, then I find myself working with a planner. It was interesting to go from the person who was seen, or I guess I thought I was seen as the strategist on the account. In truth, I was 22 years old when I started, so I don't know how much strategy was coming from the 22-year-old, but I saw myself as the strategic guiding light on the business. Then all of a sudden, I'm working with people with multiple PhDs in really obscure disciplines, not in account planning per se.

Cognitive psychology and women's studies is one combination that I remember.

David: I worked with a firm in New York City one time that had six PhDs, and they had nothing to do with the advertising field, so it was really fascinating to talk with them. In one of the interchanges I've had after that email went out to people, they were trying to see the difference between the two. It was like, "Why do you want to separate these two? We want our account managers to be the smartest people putting together the strategy like the conductor of the orchestra." I said, "Okay, let's put Elon Musk in as ambassador to some country. How do you think that's going to work?

Let's put some ambassador, so somebody you thought of in reaction to what I just said, a really good ambassador. Let's put an ambassador in charge of innovation and getting to Mars. How do you think that's going to go?" Now you start to see the difference between an account manager, an ambassador in this story, and a subject matter expert who has no-- maybe some, but not a lot of people skills. The interplay between those two needs to be handled really well. That's the dance that we're trying to manage. Now, a lot of people disagree with me. They're all wrong, but they all disagree with me.

A lot of people disagree with me on this thing. I think it's hard to see the nuances until you've seen it work until you've seen the dance between account management and strategy.

Blair: As I've already said, I've been the account manager who has been the strategist, and then I've been the account manager who's bringing strategists to the table, planners in the case of a multinational ad agency. I see the friction here. You've got six principles here, and they're the principles of not just account management, but how the account manager interacts on the strategic front, I guess you would call it. I'm going to give you the first two at the same time because they're seemingly contradictory, but you can unpack them one at a time if you like. The first one is no client interaction should occur without including the account manager. "Amen," say all the AMs out there.

The second one is we should not shield other employees from the client.

David: I almost said, "Hey, let's do these first two together." I'm glad you did that because they really are tightly wound together. The first one, no client interaction should occur without including the account manager. People misread that and they say, "Oh, see, what you're saying is that you don't want the client to talk with anybody else?" No, I'm not saying that at all. In fact, sometimes it's very appropriate to not interpret what a client is thinking through the account manager. Sometimes you need to have the person who's doing the work actually hear the client directly.

Sometimes you need that person defending their work and falling flat on their face too, to realize how some of the ideas that they thought might fly are just not going to work in front of the actual client in real life. The first one, no client interaction should occur without the account manager. There are meetings where the account manager is not present. In fact, if the client's not willing to pay for an account manager's time, assuming you're charging by time here, of course, then don't have them in there.

You never leave the account manager out of that loop. They need to be copied on emails. There should be no surprises. They're the consistent thread through everybody and everything. Exactly right. Then the second is we should not shield other employees from clients. I just want to make sure that people don't misunderstand this. We do want direct contact between the client and other people, but not leaving the account manager out of the loop. As long as we don't leave them out of the loop, it's great. It's actually beneficial to have other people. You do not want your agency to be experienced entirely through an account manager.

For one thing, that just puts you at risk if that account person leaves. You also need backup and you need checks and balances. You need people listening differently. Those two things are together for sure.

Blair: Then the third one builds on it. Knowing when to involve an SME, a subject matter expert, a strategist being one example of those is a critical skill. It seems so obvious, but when I read the words the first time, I thought, "Oh yes, I know just firms that I've worked in," This is going back a long time now. "there were too many meetings where everybody was in the room." If everybody's in the room all the time, what do you need an account manager for?

David: We need to protect these SMEs, their time too. Sometimes a client's going to want direct access when it's just a control power play. That you can just push back on it. There are really three instances when an SME is brought in. Now the client could ask for it. If the account manager deems that this is a reasonable request, then they would bring him in. Maybe the client doesn't ask for it, but the account manager says, "Hey, you know what," in their head they say this, "This would be an opportunity to really shine. Let me bring her in here to just show the depth of our knowledge on this thing and be able to just have a freewheeling discussion."

Then there are times too when the account manager who is going to be very smart and who is going to answer most of the questions, when the strategist sees those answers, they're going to say, "Oh, I wish you hadn't said that. Hey, let's manage this this way. I want to turn this project we're doing a slightly different direction. I understand why you said that. I think we can save face here." There's those three. The client might ask for it, the account manager might ask for it, and the subject matter expert might ask for it. Knowing when to involve that external player is something that an account manager is really good at.

It's not just about knowledge, it's about politics, it's about social. It's just listening for some of the unsaid clues. There's nobody else at the firm that can do that other than salespeople. They're really good at that too.

Blair: I can see how that skill would build over time, over somebody's career because early on in my mind's eye, I see junior account managers defaulting to whatever their comfort zone is, which is to involve too many people in the meeting as a default or to go it alone. I think it's just one of those things that comes with age and experience and time where you learn when it's appropriate to bring somebody in.

David: Yes, you might've gotten burned too. That was a good way to learn. [chuckles]

Blair: Always is. Principle number four, an account manager knows what questions to ask.

David: This sort of turns things on its head because I think we're under this wrong impression that strategists, researchers need to have all the answers, even if they have to go look for them. That's just not how I feel. I feel like the answers are usually there somewhere. The skill is in asking the right questions and that can be learned really well. A subject matter expert already has a lot of the answers and knows where to find the rest of them. An account manager knows what questions to ask. They're not caught off guard because the client is asking some very difficult question and they feel the pressure to answer it correctly. No, they can turn that around.

You learn so much more by going deeper and asking better and better questions than by having all of the answers. If you start to think of an account manager as the best question asker, that doesn't demean their role in the relationship. They are the best question asker. The subject matter experts that you might bring in are sometimes the best question answers, but not necessarily the best question askers. I just want to shine a light on what it really means to be a great account manager. They don't have to have all the answers, but they have to have really good questions and that is a skill to learn.

Blair: That's an interesting way of thinking about it. I like how you break it down. I spend a lot of time thinking about how the account manager role relates to sales, how new business development and account management, there are some skills obviously that overlap. One of my beefs with salespeople generally, and I think this is across the discipline of sales across numerous industries, is they see themselves as the person with the answer rather than the person with the question. I like the way that you break it up, that the account manager is the person with the question and the SME or strategist is the person with the answer. That's a great way to think about it.

Principle number five on your list of six principles, great account managers are too accessible to be viewed strategically. This is interesting.

David: Yes, this is my blanket excuse if I piss too many people off. What this allows me to say is that "Okay, account managers, you're really strategic. You're just as strategic as the other people, but clients won't see you that way." I really do believe that. I do believe that some of these account managers are really good, but the reason they don't have the sort of influence they could is because they are too accessible. We can see this principle happening everywhere. By the way, this principle is reversed in developing cultures versus developed ones. I'm hesitant to say that we live in a developed culture given all that's happening nowadays, but for the sake of argument, we'll just stipulate that.

You're an employee, and you're impressing your new boss a lot. Then you're there for five years, and it's like now you annoy them in new ways. They take you for granted. It's just like the person that bounces in and out of a relationship who says the same things that you've been saying there every day somehow gets the glory, and you're looking around and saying to yourself, "What the heck? I've been saying that this whole time." I think this might happen in marriages, too. I'm not sure. It's never happened in mine. You just get too familiar. To be a really great account manager, you have to be very accessible.

That very act of being very accessible means that you are not viewed as strategically as somebody that you bring in, and thus we have two roles.

Blair: I've always thought of this hierarchy of account managers because I grew up in ad agencies. I was hired as an account coordinator. I was promoted to account executive. Then at some point I was an account, it's funny, managers after executive. I went from a coordinator to executive. Then I left, became an account supervisor, then account director, then a director of client services. There's this massive hierarchy of account people in agencies, unnecessarily so. Within that hierarchy, I've noticed that the best junior account people, don't necessarily make the best senior account people for just this principle that you're talking about, but I frame it in different language.

The junior person is in server responder mode. They're in the business of client service. As you have said many times, and I've quoted you, it's sometimes attributed properly, you don't get hired for client service or customer service, but you do get fired for it. These junior people who are in server responder mode, they're taking care of the client. They are readily accessible. When you need that, we'll get that to you right away, et cetera. As you get senior account people over top of them, now we're assuming the account is large enough and there are multiple account people on the same account.

Those more senior people should be less server responder and more challenger-like, more strategist, less available. I didn't really think of them that way, but less accessible to the client. They're the ones who step in, push back, and have a difficult conversation. For that reason, it struck me that in smaller agencies, you get these junior people who are great at server responders. We promote them to senior role and they continue to be server responders. I guess that works in a model where you have an external strategist, does it?

David: It might, but I think you put your finger on the reason why these account people change jobs because they need a whole fresh set of clients with a different perspective, a higher perspective that otherwise they're working with these people that they were waiters before and now they're supposed to be strategists. Sorry, I knew you back then, right? It's just, that's why they change jobs.

Blair: I'd never thought about that before, but that makes a lot of sense. The principle is great managers are too accessible to be viewed strategically. I really like it. That might hurt for some people. Your sixth and last principle here that we'll unpack, the best account people can present recommendations better than anyone else. Why is that?

Blair: I think it's because-- this is where I should probably hand it off to you, but it's because they're really good at sales and they're just selling to somebody that's already on board. They have all those qualities of listening and not pushing too hard and being the experts rather than falling into some sales trap like you talk about a lot. The point I really want to make about this is that you could have other people on staff, these SMEs that are really whip-smart, but that doesn't mean those people are great at making presentations to a client to persuade them of something.

These account managers, that's what they are good at. they can send you to hell and help you enjoy the trip and you just wonder like, "What happened here? I just agreed to that." It again says, "Okay, there may be other people who are better at answering the questions," acknowledging that you're better than anybody at asking those questions, but whoever comes up with a strategy for the client, whether you're running a dev shop or an agency or a PR firm, man, whoever's presenting this needs to have account management skills. I don't care what you call them, but they better have account management skills because that is really rare.

If you think that you are going to effectively combine an account manager and a subject matter expert, another way of saying that is you don't believe in separate account managers. By God, your people better be really good at account management, even if they don't have that title. The truth is that only about 40% of the population has those abilities and the other 60% don't. Here's where this whole thing falls apart for me.

If you expect your subject matter experts to have really excellent account management skills, you are in essence assigning failure to 60% of the people who might work for you. There might be somebody who is just sharp as a tack, but they don't have those people's skills and they cannot partner with an account manager who can cover up for that, then that person's going to fail at your place just because your expectation is that they also be an account manager beyond being a subject matter expert. I'm feeling pretty passionate about this. I guess I just don't see how people don't see this, right? Anyway, that's my end of my yelling here.

Blair: When you say only 40% of people have those skills, what skills are you talking about?

David: The social, outward, relatable, listening skill.

Blair: Got you. As a former account manager, even more so than as the strategist, I would see myself as the client's voice within the agency. We talked about bounded rationality before and I've made the point that it's my belief that people are aligned to the goals of the department they are in, not the organization they work for. If I think back, going back decades now, and I think of media, I think of creative, I think of research, those three big ones, but media and creative would be the big ones. If I put the creative director in front of the client, my fear as the account manager is they're going to sell the client something that is just too creative.

Examples are coming flooding back to me, and if I put the media person in front of the client, they're going to sell a high volume of whatever. Maybe that's not the best example. I was always more comfortable putting the media people in front of the client than the creative person. I always felt like it was my job to balance the inputs of all of the subject matter experts on the team, and I would present them to the client because I felt strongly like I was the only person on the team who actually had the best interest of the client at heart.

It's not that the others weren't there to serve the client, but they were there to serve the client from a very narrow point of view. It was my job to balance everybody's point of view, and therefore, if something was going to be presented, in particular, strategic recommendation, it made sense for me to present it. I would even go further and say that whether this is true or not, I don't know, but in my mind, my clients expected me to do that balancing act, and they would listen to everybody else, and they would look at me and say, "Blair, what do you think?"

Now, whether that was just delusional on my part or not, I don't know, but that's how I felt like the dynamics were working, so of course, it would be my job to present strategy or anything else to the client. What do you think?

David: I don't think I've ever seen quite so clearly that through line between selling as an expert, which you talk a lot about, and then when you hand that new relationship off to an account manager, you're almost saying, "Hey, this is a neighborhood kid of mine. Take good care of him." That's like the account manager, you're saying, "All right, you're in charge of ensuring that this relationship that we hope will last a long time is going to be good for both parties. Do not sell them something that they don't need," and that's what an account manager does. It is sort of like the conductor of an orchestra, but an ambassador in both directions, like you were saying.

I don't think I'd ever seen that throughline before about thinking about the client's perspective as well. It's not the most important job in a firm. I think that's project management, but it is absolutely the most difficult job because it's like you're getting your paycheck from the firm, but you are doing what's in the best interest of the client, and sometimes those clash. That's what it means to be an expert is to balance those two things all the time.

Blair: I used to always say brand first, client second, agency third, me fourth. I know I was the only one in the team who was putting those priorities forward in that order. I'm reliving some moments from my past, as I always do when we talk about account management. Once again, David, this has been great. I'll just read these six key principles of delivering strategic guidance through account managers. Number one, no client interaction should occur without including the account manager. I think we all agree on that. Number two, we should not shield other employees from the client. These are seemingly contradictory, but they're not.

Number three, knowing when to involve an SME, subject matter expert, or strategist is a critical skill. Number four, an account manager knows what questions to ask. Number five, great account managers are too accessible to be viewed strategically. Number six, the best account people can present recommendations better than anyone else on the team. Thanks for this and the trip down memory lane once again.

David: Thanks, Blair.